


a new old home

by DigitalisC



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Childhood Friends, Childhood Memories, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:08:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26550412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DigitalisC/pseuds/DigitalisC
Summary: Bernadetta, now married and back in the estate she was raised, thinks back on the faint echoes in the walls, and in the garden, and in the shade.Yuridetta flavored reminiscence, but no specified pairing.
Relationships: Yuris Leclair | Yuri Leclerc/Bernadetta von Varley
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	a new old home

**Author's Note:**

> this was sitting in my discord drafts for a while after i wrote it at work at 3am, so i just... cleaned it up a bit, because i love this premise...

The estate is less haunting, now.

Everything hurts her less to look at than it did when she first came home. The old dining table is nice, really, though worn with scratches. The halls are as empty as she’s ever wished. Her husband is gentle, and takes care to not sneak up on her in certain parts of the home, and keeps her company wherever the ghosts live. The old garden has been renewed, new vegetables in the patches under mostly replaced trees as the old ones have slowly died. Nearly everything is new, free from the scars that etched into all of it and her at the same time.

It was full grown even when she was young.

She tripped over the roots as often as she ran over them, yet even so, it was taken care of with the same love and kindness placed on her scrapes and scuffs. Perhaps in better hands, if she or someone else knew what they were doing, it could have maybe twenty more years left in it. Thirty, even, if it were nurtured just right, by someone who knew what they were doing, who cared, who was exceptional, who was-

Maybe some things aren’t her fault, in the end.  
But she’s sad to watch the tree slowly drain away, all the memories of kindness under the white flowers of spring seeming to drift into a distant haze along with it.  
Bernadetta kneels down on it carefully, smoothing her long skirt over her legs to protect her skin from the gnarled roots. 

The poor thing is rotting, she thinks as she passes a hand over a patch that has gone purple, then white with fungus. Her husband will happily write the letter for her to get it removed, if only she asks, but she hopes it has one more season of flowers in it, perhaps. There’s a certain sort of melancholy in watching the petals blow in the breeze, even now.

It’s the one thing she can only think of fondly, each time, and with it comes each bit from everywhere else that meant something.

She’s sorry that she doesn’t know how to take care of the old thing.  
She’s thankful that it’s still here after her return home.  
She prays to Sothis that if he is dead, he can forgive her, and if he is alive, he can forget.

The poor old gardenia tree loses all of its will to live the following summer, scorched by the bright heat of a southern sun on the arid side of the mountains, as its mother spends her time indoors.

It is dug up in winter alongside the birth of the Bear of Varley’s eldest son, whose father mocked the newborn incessantly for his name that sounded oh so fake, as if made up by a child.

**Author's Note:**

> gardenia flowers: secret love, purity, new beginnings.


End file.
